A cavalcade of great performances deftly directed by Joachim Trier made SENTIMENTAL VALUE a richly deserving nominee for Nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture of 2025. This deeply felt portrait of a family with decades of history, a life in the arts and tragedy in their lineage is beautifully compelling. It pulled me in fast with its opening scenes and never let me off the edge of my seat. Flawlessly crafted, compelling human relationships are fascinating to watch and

Oscar winners Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman teamed up in 1972 for a violent mob thriller bathed in blood. While it has a few great scenes, PRIME CUT is decidedly underdone. Hackman, hot off filming "The French Connection" is Mary Ann, a Kansas City mobster with a hair trigger who likes to put his adversaries through the meat grinder at his KC slaughterhouse, Mary Ann's Meats. His name is never explained, but I can only imagine it's part of why he's so pissed off. After a rival

A fun throwback to the adult action comedies of the 80's, MIKE & NICK & NICK & ALICE delivers a double helping of Vince Vaughn in his best role(s) in years. It takes a bit to get going, but once the intricate pieces start to fall into place, so does the fun. Over the opening credits, we meet a screwball scientist named Symon, played by Ben Schwartz (Sonic the Hedgehog). We can't quite tell what he's working on, but I do know he's singing an entire Billy Joel song from a long

"A battleground in shades of gray, played out in deception, seduction, and bad faith..." So wild that it could only be true, OPERATION MINCEMEAT is an intriguing World War 2 drama with suspense and intrigue to spare. An all-star British cast delivers an impossible series of deceptions in one of those beautifully detailed period dramas that the UK seems to have mastered long ago. Rather that a front lines themed story with plenty of big budget war action, this is a tale about

One of the most powerful miniseries I've ever experienced, HBO's CHERNOBYL plunges you directly into the greatest man-made disaster in world history. Spread over five episodes, it's gripping from its very first moments, presenting tragedy on an unimaginable scale, hidden by a now extinct Soviet regime that could never admit failure on any scale. There are NO weak episodes among the five, with each highlighting a distinct part of the story. We open with a quiet scene featurin

They don't make movie stars like Robert Redford anymore. In 1984, four years after his last film "Brubaker", Redford returned to the screen in THE NATURAL . Beautifully shot, leisurely paced and set to Randy Newman's all-time great music score, it's a baseball fable that spans decades. The film opens with young Roy Hobbs (Redford) on his way to Chicago to play with the Cubs. There are glimpses of amazing talent and an anxious departure for the big city. But the story doesn't

Packed with wall-to-wall laughs, action and gore, READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME is a hilarious & twisted horror sequel that does not demand you've seen the first film, I haven't! But I'm going to make a point of seeing it now. A very game cast, young & established, deliver a bloody entertaining good time. The film picks up right where the first entry ended, with Grace (Samara Weaving from "Babylon" and "Scream VI") emerging victorious from a lethal game that her new in-laws sp

A complete cinematic train wreck, THE BRIDE! is an unwatchable, boring, moronic, self-important mess that starts badly and goes downhill from there. It's a good thing Jessie Buckley won an Oscar last weekend for "Hamnet", because she's horrible here, overacting so badly she makes Jack Nicholson in "The Shining" look monstrously reserved. To be fair to Buckley, Director Maggie Gyllenhaal is responsible for this mess. There is "swinging for the fences" and then there's this, a

A feast for the eyes and the ears in Dolby Cinema, PROJECT HAIL MARY aims for the stars and beautifully blows past them by every measure. Adapting Andy Weir's best selling novel, Oscar winning Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have created a science fiction film for the ages. If you're old enough (like me) to have seen "2001" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" on the big screen when they were released, get ready to have that same sense of wonder again in the th

As we get ready to watch the latest Andy Weir adaption, "Project Hail Mary" this evening, let's take a look back at my review of "The Martian" , the film adaption of Weir's first novel in 2015. When you look at Ridley Scott's three films within the Science Fiction film canon of the past 40 years, "Alien", "Blade Runner" and even (arguably) "Prometheus" stand out as modern film classics. Let's add another one to that group with 2015's THE MARTIAN . Based on first-time novelis